Current Event Article
Unit (s): 1, 2, 5
Questions (main and follow-up questions this article applies to):
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What is civic virtue? Give examples of people who practice civic virtue in your
school and community.
In your own words, what is the “common good?” Give some examples.
Do you believe that government should promote the common good?” How?
What responsibilities go along with the rights of citizens?
How does a responsible citizen promote the common good?
Synopsis (summarize, bold key concepts):
Howard County Executive, Ken Ulman, opens a composting facility to encourage
more residents in Howard County to compost.
Executive Ulman Opens Alpha Ridge Composting
Facility
Food scrap collection to expand; costs lower than landfilling
Mark Miller, Administrator, Office of Public Information, 410-313-2022, www.howardcountymd.gov
MARRIOTTSVILLE, MD – Howard County Executive Ken Ulman opened a state-of-the art composting
operation today that will allow the County to double its curbside food scrap collection to 10,000
households, the largest in Maryland.
The facility will operate at the Alpha Ridge Landfill in Marriottsville, diverting up to 400 tons of material a
year from landfills and producing mulch, topsoil and other byproducts that will be sold to the public and
used at county facilities.
Food scraps and yard waste from Howard County homes will be brought to the facility daily, where the
material will be ground, placed in piles and connected to an odor-control system. After about 10 weeks, the
end products will be available to be sold to landscaping companies and residents. The facility is designed to
control odors and run-off, and can be expanded in the future.
“It’s exciting to open this operation on Earth Day,” Executive Ulman said. “Our goal is to truly reduce,
reuse and recycle as much as possible in Howard County. Food scraps make up a quarter of our waste
stream. When we can keep them local, turn them into a valuable product and then use that product to
protect the environment, it’s the very definition of a sustainable win-win-win.”
With the opening of the composting facility, Howard County is preparing to greatly expand its curbside
food-scrap collection program. For more than a year, the service has been offered on a pilot basis to about
5,000 homes in the Elkridge/Ellicott City area. Within the next year, it will be offered to a second
Howard County Public School System
Current Event Article
collection zone, adding another 5,000 homes, in Columbia.
“We want to make this service available to as many people as possible, as soon as we can,” Executive
Ulman said. “There are a lot of steps: we need to make sure everyone knows about the benefits, we have to
overcome the ‘yuck’ factor a little bit, and we need to figure out how to include markets and other
commercial operations. But pretty soon, this will be routine. We know that people really want this.”
Ulman was joined today by state and local officials, including David Costello, deputy secretary of the
Maryland Department of the Environment.
"Projects such as Howard County’s composting facility are a critical part of Maryland’s zero waste
initiative, which will bring us environmental benefits that include a reduction in the greenhouse gas
emissions that help cause climate change," said Deputy Secretary Costello. "Maryland understands that
food scrap composting – which in addition to greenhouse gas benefits provides economic benefits,
including jobs – is in many ways the next frontier in recycling, and we have been working on ways to
promote composting and to ensure that it is being done in a way that protects the environment and public
health."
Brenda Platt, the co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Montgomery County, said “this is
the first program in Maryland composting food scraps collected from households within the same
community. Now that’s self-reliance. Every day will be Earth Day in Howard County.”
The Alpha Ridge facilty cost $800,000 to construct. While it cost Howard County $41.50 per ton to remove
regular household waste to a landfill in Virginia, it will cost $38.50 to process food scraps and yard trim at
Alpha Ridge, selling the end-product.
Howard County Public School System